


seascape

by anchors



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: 221B Ficlet, Angst, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Ocean, Post-Reichenbach, cold hearts, cold seas, post-Return
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-10
Updated: 2013-08-10
Packaged: 2017-12-23 00:00:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 221
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/919589
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anchors/pseuds/anchors
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>Oh, my shipwreck man, that I might always come apart at your shore-step.</em>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	seascape

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [Let's Write Sherlock](http://letswritesherlock.tumblr.com/) Challenge #3 on tumblr: [songfic](http://letswritesherlock.tumblr.com/post/56048461490/the-results-are-in-and-for-challenge-3-your-prompt). Song used to set the mood here is "[Spanish Sahara](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYoINidnLRQ)" by Foals ( _warning_ : the linked music video contains potentially triggering use of animal carcasses; while the setting is as relevant to the fic as the music, this is not. But please exercise caution, and go [here](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=prGptG5Ex1g) for a non-video link if you so choose).

Their chase ends here: pale bluffs blown down to the shore, some frozen vagrants crouched against the windswept world.

_Cheekbones like cliffsides_ , John had murmured, Everest-lipped.  _Careful, these winds are the biting kind_.

They are, they do - they’ve nipped him pink, but it’s nothing to the snow-stain of guilty blood.

“Bashed on the rocks,” he surmises, “like a shipwreck.”

Here the sea chokes up around shards of ice, sprays of salt coughed weakly through glass-deep indigo, soughing with secrets, soft.

John looks at the dead man, looks to Sherlock. “This is what it felt like. Do you understand?”

He doesn’t.

“Cold, Sherlock. Cold.”  _John looking away sinking deeper deeper still an indigo secret sighed back to its oceans_ : “I can’t forgive that.”

The water floods Sherlock’s boots, trousers, skin. This, blood breaking from blue veins overstretched - a hydropic swell beneath his lungs and John’s cries breaking from his throat on an inward risen tide.

There was a lighthouse here, once. Sherlock drags John up by the ruins, holding him as the shivers pass through bone, as water droplets slide from his skin. They breathe. And, nose at the hollow of John’s jaw, he understands:

Tear-salt, the sweat-salt that lingers on their bedsheets like a bitter brine - together a sea-salt, more biting than these indifferent arctic winds. Something ancient in the breaks.


End file.
